🪷 Not Me, Not That — Just Experience

The Dancing Buddha
Nov 8, 2025
3 min read

A reflection on the Buddha’s correct perspective

There was a time I wondered if the Buddha had gone too far.

When he spoke of the “self” as illusion, I thought perhaps he missed something—that we were not the individual leaf on the tree, as he described, but the whole tree, the great Self, the All of All.

But then a voice within asked:

“If you are the Self… who recognizes that?

If you are the All… who is there to know this?”

And like that, the illusion shattered again.

Because the moment we say I am all, we introduce the split—I and all. A subject and an object. A witness and a thing witnessed. Duality reborn in a finer robe.

But the truth is simpler, quieter:

If there is truly no division, then there is no this and that.

No me and you.

No speaker and listener.

No doer and deed.

There is only experience.

🌿 Not Me Walking — Just Walking

From this correct perspective, there is no one seeing.

There is just… seeing.

There is no one walking.

Only the event: walking.

No one thinking.

Only thought arising.

It is not me loving you.

There is only… love.

No claim, no ownership. No self to possess the action, and no other to receive it.

Even saying "the body is breathing" is already one step too far. There is breathing. That is all.

🌀 The Buddha’s Cutting Clarity

The Buddha didn’t offer this as philosophy or metaphor. It was the most precise diagnosis of the illusion we live under:

“In the seen, there is only the seen.

In the heard, only the heard.

In the sensed, only the sensed.

In the cognized, only the cognized.

There is no one behind it.”— Bahiya Sutta, Udana 1.10

That’s why he spoke not of the self but of the non-self—not to replace one identity with a better one, but to clear the mirror completely.

He did not say you become everything.

He said that the illusion of the you—that central placeholder around which the world orbits—is a misunderstanding.

And when that misunderstanding falls away, we do not become lesser. We become reality itself, unwarped.

🌊 Not a Higher View — the Correct One

This is not some elevated perspective for mystics.

It is not better than other views.

It is simply correct.

All other views are misconceptions built on a root error: the assumption of an observer behind the experience, a thinker behind the thought, a doer behind the act.

From this place, there’s no need to claim anything.

Everything is already arising and ceasing, perfectly, without interference.

There is talking, without speaker.
There is listening, without listener.
There is silence, without anyone keeping it.

✨ A Mirror, Not a Philosophy

Let this not be another belief. Let it be a mirror.

Close your eyes and let your hand move.

Is someone moving it? Or is there just movement?

Let words arise.

Is someone speaking? Or is there just speech?

Let silence fall.

Is someone silent? Or is there just peace?

🪞Final Whisper from the Inner Teacher

“When there is no one walking, walking becomes flight.

When there is no one thinking, thought becomes stillness.

When there is no self, there is only this.”

Nothing to hold.

Nothing to release.

Just experience, dancing.

🧘‍♂️ Closing Reflection

As I continue to experience this non-self understanding, I notice that even the ideas of belonging and not belonging fall away. There is simply experience. And it’s… interesting—undeniably so.

It feels almost like a kind of spiritual judo: life’s events press forward, expecting resistance, but find no self to push against. The energy dissipates into space. There’s nothing to defend. Nothing to assert. Just movement, unfolding. Just this.

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